Lady in White

Gradually the troopship drew away and at the end of the jetty that white-clad figure started Auld Lang Syne. As the gap grew, just snatches of the words came to us, and finally, just a picture of that solitary figure in white waving to us, and we swear she was still singing. We may forget many things of this war, but never the songs of Durban's lady in white. (From a magazine published on board a British troopship en route to India some time in 1942.)

The lady in white is a great South African feature of the war. She is smiling, stocky, big-bosomed, 52-year-old Perla Siedle, a onetime Wagnerian soprano who has sung to more than 5,000 ships carrying a quarter of a million Allied servicemen in & out of South Africa's busiest wartime port. Standing on Durban's quays in her invariable white dress and red hat, Perla Siedle amplifies her vibrant soprano with a ship's megaphone. Yanks ask for God Bless America, The Star-Spangled Banner, Tommies for There'll Always Be An England. Australians want Waltzing Matilda. South Africans prefer their own Afrikander folk songs like Sarie Marais. Czechs, Poles and Greeks like opera arias.

Perla Siedle is known to U.S. doughboys as Kate Smith or Ma, to Britons as the Lady in White or the Soldiers' Sweetheart, to the Poles as the South African Nightingale. The wealthy daughter of a South African shipowner, she studied in Germany as a young woman, gave recitals years ago in both London and Manhattan. What Perla calls her "wharfside work" began three years ago when she was seeing off a young Irish seaman her family had entertained the day before. Across the water he yelled: "Please sing something Irish." Through cupped hands, Perla obliged with When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.

Soldiers' talk has spread Perla's fame across the world. Captains usually salute her as their ships pass her dock. Her megaphone came from a torpedoed liner as a gift from grateful Tommies. Perla Siedle is the wife of Air Sergeant Jack Gibson, last stationed at Foggia, Italy, and she has two sons and one daughter in the South African Army. She has sung goodby to all of them, watching their ships move out of sight over the bar to the tune of her favorite closing number, Auld Lang Syne.

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